Published 10:42 pm, Thursday, June 7, 2012

ALBANY — Several environmental groups are challenging the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency over the future of the PCB cleanup of the Hudson River, claiming Thursday that the EPA is planning on an incomplete cleanup.

An EPA report issued last week found that river bottom dredging, begun in 2009 near Fort Edward, is expected to meet cleanup goals set up when EPA and General Electric Co. reached a cleanup agreement in 2002, EPA spokeswoman Larisa Romanowski said Thursday.

Dredging resumed last month and is expected to continue each spring and summer for four to six more years.

But the report did not address two problems — areas where PCB pollution that turned out to be greater than what was expected in 2002 and the fate of the Champlain Canal navigation channel in the Hudson, which will not be dredged because it was left out of the 2002 agreement, said Larry Levine, a lawyer with the Natural Resources Defense Council.

"EPA's review confirms that cleanup effort has been successfully and safely removing toxic PCBs from portions of the Hudson River nearest to Fort Edward, the site of a GE manufacturing plant that dumped into the river decades ago," he said. "But it also recognizes that, under current plans for completing the project, higher pollution levels than expected will remain just downstream, delaying the recovery of the Hudson."

NRDC, along with environmental groups Scenic Hudson, Hudson Riverkeeper and the Hudson River Sloop Clearwater — all of which belong to an EPA citizens advisory group that is watching over the cleanup — raised concerns in a May 4 letter to EPA Regional Administrator Judith Enck.

Romanowski said the cleanup may take longer because of higher-than-first-expected PCB hotspots. The issue of dredging the canal is not up to EPA, but is within state control, she added.

The environmental groups claim that EPA's review indicates that PCB levels in a five-mile stretch from the Thompson Island Dam to the Northumberland Dam will be reduced only about half as much as originally expected because some areas have more PCBs than were known at the time of the 2004 cleanup plan.

EPA reported the cleanup "could be achieved more quickly ... if additional dredging ... were to be carried out" but said other federal and state agencies may address the issue.

"EPA acknowledges that a large stretch of the river will fail to meet cleanup targets by a wide margin because of PCB contamination that the federal cleanup doesn't address," said Paul Gallay, president of Riverkeeper. "Yet no further federal action is proposed. That's just not good enough."